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Comment by tomlockwood | Hacker News Reader

Not surprising considering for a few days there, after control was implemented, the National Health Commission numbers adhered to an exponential trend with an R2 value of 0.995-9.

https://twitter.com/whistle_posse/status/1221964216040509440

An exponential curve is a great way to catch up to the numbers of infected that already exist.

The good news is this means the outbreak is less contagious and uncontrolled than was reported.

Its also probably harder to hide deaths than recoveries, so the mortality rate is likely lower.

The bad news is, people may be infectious for longer before they show symptoms.

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"The bad news is, people may be infectious for longer before they show symptoms."

There is evidence that the study claiming the virus can be transmitted by people without symptoms was flawed.[1]

Also, according to that article, even if asymptomatic people transmit the virus "asymptomatic transmission likely plays a minor role in the epidemic overall, WHO says. People who cough or sneeze are more likely to spread the virus, the agency wrote"

[1] - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-symptomati...

Of course people who cough and sneeze are more likely to transmit it! I can’t trust the WHO when they make what to me seem to me to be intentionally misleading statements.

>There is evidence that the study claiming the virus can be transmitted by people without symptoms was flawed.

There's also a recent news story that a UK citizen is a "super spreader", and that he had contact with all the cases in France while being asymptomatic. He even went home and felt fine, carrying on his normal activities for four days before becoming Ill and being confirmed with the virus.

>Its also probably harder to hide deaths than recoveries, so the mortality rate is likely lower.

1) you obviously mean Case Fatality Rate, instead of mortality rate, since the latter is independent of number of recoveries when keeping deaths fixed (unhideable).

2) What would China's motive be to hide recovered infection counts with the result of reporting a higher than truthful case fatality rate? Do you actually believe China wants local panic and fear, or that it actually wants to loose 2% annual productivity per week in quarantine?

Cool username!

1) Sure! I don't think that really changes my points though. 2) That's only true if the rate correlates with panic, and if the Chinese government knows that would be the effect. They may be sacrificing panic, over a higher case fatality rate, in order to retain an illusion of competence in identifying and addressing the outbreak. I don't think it'd be out of character for an authoritarian government to care about appearances in that sort of way.

A pizza a day keeps the doctor away

The good news is this means the outbreak is less contagious and uncontrolled than was reported.

How do you figure? If you're juicing the numbers presumably you're doing so to make things look better than they are. An optimistic curve is going to catch up to reality only if reality stays the same (or improves). About the only thing we know is that the data from China are suspect.

Maybe they juiced the numbers to make it appear like the epidemic was discovered promptly, rather than late.

Maybe hiding the deaths has been working well: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7969861/Wuhan-crema...

If they are requesting 100 body bags per day how does that’s square with the official death count?

Daily mail? I'm going to need some more sources for whatever it is they're claiming.

That's why we would all be sleeping easier in our bed if the Chinese would just accept externla help from the USA/WHO/anyone. So far as I understand, there are currently no external observers. There are no reliable sources. Daily Mail is currently no more or less reliable than any other source currently.

I think “bad information from China => daily mail as good as anything else” is a pretty cynical view. I don’t think it’s true in this case

Wuhan is a city of 11 million people. New York City has a population of about 8 million people. In 2010 NYC saw an average of 144 deaths per day (Table P3). By those numbers you'd expect to see around 200 deaths daily in Wuhan without any added pressure from a pandemic.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/pdf/govpub/6551as_2010_final...

100 body bags per crematorium, 49 crematoriums in Wuhan, supposedly 11 working around the clock.

Which I guess would put deaths at nearer 2000 a day than the official 100 or so.

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